Getting Away with Murder

Below is the transcript of the Channel 9 Australia Sixty Minutes broadcast of April 23, 2006, titled “Getting Away with Murder”

Before his untimely death the much respected reporter Richard Carlton interviewed accused murderer Raymond John Carroll as well as, at a different location, Faye Kennedy, mother of victim Deidre Kennedy.

Producers: Chris Blackburn, Howard Sacre

INTRODUCTION

Richard Carlton voiceover: It is a very sick man who would abuse and then murder a baby. Two juries have said Raymond John Carroll murdered 17-month-old Deidre Kennedy near Brisbane 33 years ago. But Mr Carroll is not now in jail and he never will be. Tonight Raymond Carroll publicly defends himself. When you first come face to face with a man you believe to be a murderer, it's difficult to know just how to react. I shook his hand and then immediately regretted it.

INTERVIEW

RICHARD CARLETON: Friday, 13 April 1973. Some time during that night this 17-month-old baby Deidre Kennedy was abducted from a cot in Ipswich and the baby was taken down to Limestone Park in Ipswich. Terrible things were done to the baby, including biting the thighs of the child. The baby was sexually interfered with and then the body was thrown up on the roof of the lavatory in the park. A horrendous crime, isn't it?

RAYMOND CARROLL: It is a horrendous crime, yes.

RICHARD CARLETON: Horrendous.

RAYMOND CARROLL: It definitely is.

RICHARD CARLETON: Could you imagine anything worse?

RAYMOND CARROLL: No, I couldn't.

RICHARD CARLETON: Did you do it?

RAYMOND CARROLL: No, I did not.

RICHARD CARLETON: Two juries say you did.

RAYMOND CARROLL: Two juries said I did. Three courts of appeal said I didn't.

RICHARD CARLETON: Twelve men and women, wise and true, twice said you did.

RAYMOND CARROLL Yes. I'll agree to that. They did convict me.

RICHARD CARLETON: How is it that such a man could agree to such an interview that so obviously was going to be, well, robust? Well, there was a proviso, and it was that we agreed to do a lie detector test with him that he believed it would prove his innocence. Now, lie detectors are in some quarters seen to be just plain rubbish. But we thought it was a small price to pay for the opportunity to gain an insight into the mind of a man who has been twice convicted for murdering a baby. Just raise your arms up for us a little bit. The test, so-called, was conducted by Australian Polygraph Services. Carroll was wired to machines monitoring his breathing, blood pressure and perspiration and then asked a series of questions, some easy...

POLYGRAPH TEST OPERATOR: Do you live in Queensland?

RAYMOND CARROLL: Yes.

RICHARD CARLETON: …some not so.

POLYGRAPH TEST OPERATOR: Did you kill Deidre Kennedy?

RAYMOND CARROLL: No, I did not.

RICHARD CARLETON: With his wife Marlin there for support — Carroll's thrice married — he was questioned for just over an hour. Then the results scored.

POLYGRAPH TEST OPERATOR: The score that I got for Raymond Carroll of plus 7 was a conclusive result. That is, he is telling the truth.

RICHARD CARLETON: Are you being paid for this interview?

RAYMOND CARROLL: No, I am not.

RICHARD CARLETON: Any way or form?

RAYMOND CARROLL: In no way or form am I being paid for this.

RICHARD CARLETON: Short Street, 50m down on the left-hand side, the flat where baby Deidre was abducted. And see that car just going by now? That's Quarry Lane down there where Carroll lived. Immediately opposite — Limestone Park where the body was found — the whole crime scene within a 200m square.

FAYE KENNEDY: I did what I thought was right at the time — put my children to bed — and, as far as I knew, they were safe.

RICHARD CARLETON: As you might imagine, the Kennedy family has suffered immensely. For the first 12 years, it was a murder case without a clue as to who did it.

FAYE KENNEDY: After we lost Deidre, I guess I could have walked off the side of the earth. I was — I just felt so beaten. I'd lost my baby. We tried to get on with our life as best we could until that day we got a phone call to say that they had picked this person up. And we had no idea of what we were in for after that.

RICHARD CARLETON: Raymond Carroll had been picked up and was later convicted of a strange break and enter at the women's quarters of the Amberley RAAF base not that far away. It was the chance association in a policeman's mind between bizarre aspects of this break-in and bizarre aspects of the unsolved Kennedy murder 12 years earlier that was Raymond Carroll's initial undoing. Why did you break and enter?

RAYMOND CARROLL: In what way? What exactly do you want, Richard?

RICHARD CARLETON: What happened? What did you do? You did it. Well, I'm sorry, the Crown says you did it, the State says you did it.

Back in those days, a boundary fence ran along here. And on the night of the break and enter, the police noted Carroll's car parked outside. But it was a special kind of break and enter because the intruder went up one of those drainpipes and into the women's quarters upstairs. There, whilst the woman slept, he pilfered photographs of her she had at her bed head. He then gathered women's underwear and RAAF uniforms, possibly here, and brought them into this ironing room. Here, he destroyed the underwear and defaced the photograph. Carroll's prints are on the photograph. How did your fingerprints come to be on the photograph if you didn't do it?

RAYMOND CARROLL: I don't know. I honestly don't know.

RICHARD CARLETON: It wasn't just, you know, an ordinary break and enter — a kid going through a window and stealing a television, was it? This was getting the underwear of women and cutting the crutch out of them and cutting the nipple section off the bras.

RAYMOND CARROLL: Yes. That was the crime.

RICHARD CARLETON: Perverted?

RAYMOND CARROLL: Yes.

RICHARD CARLETON: Most importantly, it was this event in 1982 that drew you to the attention of the police who were investigating the murder of the baby back in '73.

RAYMOND CARROLL: That's correct.

RICHARD CARLETON: What had associated the break-in with the Kennedy murder was that the Kennedy baby had been dressed up in women's underwear before its abuse and murder. Suddenly, a cold case was red hot and Carroll was charged with murder.

What did Deidre Kennedy die from? C'mon, you must remember.

RAYMOND CARROLL: I'm assuming asphyxiation.

RICHARD CARLETON: Yes, asphyxiation and strangulation. A 17-month-old baby that size.

RAYMOND CARROLL: A 17-month-old. Yes, I know, it is a truly horrendous crime. I am fully aware of that.

RICHARD CARLETON: The body of the baby, whether it was alive or dead, was bitten.

RAYMOND CARROLL: Yes. There was a bite mark present on the child.

RICHARD CARLETON: Two.

RAYMOND CARROLL: Debatable.

RICHARD CARLETON: Bitten by a person, experts say, who had a strange set of teeth.

RAYMOND CARROLL: True. That's what the court found out in the court case.

RICHARD CARLETON: You've got a strange set of teeth, haven't you?

RAYMOND CARROLL: Yes, I have an unusual dentition.

RICHARD CARLETON: Describe the unusual nature of your teeth, please.

RAYMOND CARROLL: I have an overbite, which means the bottom is behind the front. The front and top teeth do not meet.

RICHARD CARLETON: In fact, you can't do that?

RAYMOND CARROLL: No, I can not.

RICHARD CARLETON: And the experts say the bites on the baby match the strange set of teeth you've got.

RAYMOND CARROLL: That's the evidence they gave, yes.

RICHARD CARLETON: It's hard to keep calm in this circumstance, Mr Carroll.

RAYMOND CARROLL: The evidence does not add up. Bite marks are supposed to be so unique, OK? The bite marks are so unique, they're compared to fingerprints. Now, a fingerprint can belong to one person and one person only. If my dentition is so unique and matches that bite mark so perfectly, how is it that in the second trial the prosecution has come up and said, "Sorry, but the first trial we had it wrong"? His teeth were upside down in the first trial, so basically the trial I was convicted on incorrect evidence.

RICHARD CARLETON: (Reads extracts of police statement) The baby did not have deep bruises. There was a width between the upper and lower marks. That indicates to me, says the expert, that the biter's top and bottom teeth cannot close together when his jaw is shut. That's you.

RAYMOND CARROLL: That's not just me. Am I the only person with an overbite in this world?

RICHARD CARLETON: Carroll was found guilty of murder. The dental evidence may have been decisive but, to be fair to him, other eminent dental experts later gave completely contradictory evidence.

When you heard the guilty verdict, was that, well, not celebration, but did you feel...

FAYE KENNEDY: He was off the street. He was away. He wouldn't do it again.

RICHARD CARLETON: Then came the appeal?

FAYE KENNEDY: Mm. That's when it all went bad. That's when it went bad.

RICHARD CARLETON: After nine months in jail, Carroll won an appeal. The dental evidence was 'unsafe' and he was free.

FAYE KENNEDY: It was like the bottom just fell out of your world. And I wonder sometimes whether we'd have been better off never knowing what - who did this. You can't explain the pain and the hurt that you feel, the loss. It's just - it's wrong.

RICHARD CARLETON: All along, Carroll had insisted he couldn't have committed the murder because he wasn't in Ipswich on the night in question, as they say. As a 17-year-old RAAF recruit, he claims he was in Adelaide doing basic training and preparing for his graduation parade.

On Friday, 13 April 1973, you were in Edinburgh, South Australia?

RAYMOND CARROLL: Yes.

RICHARD CARLETON: A lot of people say you weren't. Let's count them. Recruit Sagar says you weren't there, recruit Sheahan says you weren't there, Inspector Martin says you weren't there, recruit Franklin says you weren't there and recruit Flynn said you weren't there and recruit Goddard says you weren't there.

RAYMOND CARROLL: Yeah. You're going well. That's what came out through the court system, yes.

RICHARD CARLETON: They're all lying and you're telling the truth?

RAYMOND CARROLL: They believe what they believe. I believe what I know.

RICHARD CARLETON: That's not what I asked you. They're all lying and you're telling the truth?

RAYMOND CARROLL: Yes. If you want an outright answer, yes, they are.

RICHARD CARLETON: Explain the amazing coincidence that you didn't appear in the graduation photograph from the RAAF base in South Australia.

RAYMOND CARROLL: Yes, I did not appear in the graduation photograph.

RICHARD CARLETON: And the reason why?

RAYMOND CARROLL: The reason why is that I either asked or was asked to be off the parade.

RICHARD CARLETON: Why?

RAYMOND CARROLL: I do not know. The exact reason for that I cannot tell you. The course after the graduation march, marched off the parade straight into a staging area for photographs. The photograph was taken. No, I do not appear in that photograph.

RICHARD CARLETON: Because if you did...?

RAYMOND CARROLL: If I did, I wouldn't appear here because this would be all circumspect, wouldn't it? It would be physical proof to say I was in Edinburgh. If I was in Edinburgh at the time, I couldn't be in Ipswich at the time.

RICHARD CARLETON: But he was in Ipswich, according to Carroll's girlfriend of the day, Desley Hall. Well, she asserts black and blue that, the night after the murder, you called on her. She says that. Is she lying?

RAYMOND CARROLL: Yes.

RICHARD CARLETON: And you're telling the truth?

RAYMOND CARROLL: Yes.

RICHARD CARLETON: Sagar, she and Martin, Franklin, Flynn, Goddard and now Desley Hall. They're all liars? You're telling the truth?

RAYMOND CARROLL: That's correct.

RICHARD CARLETON: Having beaten the murder wrap, when new evidence came up, Carroll couldn't be charged again. That would have been double jeopardy. And this is where the prosecution got smart, possibly even too smart. They then charged him with perjury, claiming that at his first trial he had lied when he said he didn't do the murder. A lawyer's trick? Anyway, again a jury found him guilty. Again he won on appeal and then the High Court itself ruled in his favour on this double jeopardy principle. Mr Vasta, are you convinced that he did it?

ANGELO VASTA: Yes, I am.

RICHARD CARLETON: Angelo Vasta was the judge at Carroll's first trial. He says the High Court got it wrong when it upheld the legal principle of double jeopardy. A person acquitted of a crime cannot be retried for the same offence.

RAYMOND CARROLL: The issue is did he kill the child or did he not? And it didn't take long for two separate and distinct groups of 12 good men and true, good citizens and true taken at random from the community to say that he did it.

RICHARD CARLETON: You had a child by your first wife.

RAYMOND CARROLL: Yes, I did.

RICHARD CARLETON: And that first wife says that you proposed that that child be called Deidre.

RAYMOND CARROLL: That's the allegation, yes.

RICHARD CARLETON: She's lying?

RAYMOND CARROLL: Yes.

RICHARD CARLETON: Your first wife also says of this child that three or four times she can recall you changing the baby's nappy behind locked doors, hearing the child scream and then, when you eventually emerged from the room with the child, the child had bruises over it. And you wouldn't talk about it. Is it true that she said that?

RAYMOND CARROLL: That is true she made those allegations, yes.

RICHARD CARLETON: And is she lying there too?

RAYMOND CARROLL: Yes.

RICHARD CARLETON: You're telling the truth?

RAYMOND CARROLL: Yes.

RICHARD CARLETON: How many are we up to now that are liars and you're not?

RAYMOND CARROLL: I'm not keeping count.

RICHARD CARLETON: It is the coincidence, though, isn't it, of 11 people in a row lying and you 11 times telling the truth? That's what's strange.

RAYMOND CARROLL: That's what's strange. But, like I said, if you put it that way in a generalised fashion, yes, it is very strange. But if you sit there and go through all the evidence that is produced to dispute their allegations, it does not make sense.

RICHARD CARLETON: Mr Carroll, do you think it is possible — this is 33 years ago — that, over the last 33 years, you have been able to convince yourself, convince yourself that you didn't do it?

RAYMOND CARROLL: No.

RICHARD CARLETON: In her book Justice in Jeopardy Debbie Marshall finds Deidre's killer a psychopathic paedophile with tendencies to fetishism. If Carroll is the killer, then paedophile or not, he's protected by the double jeopardy rule. Faye Kennedy is now campaigning to have that rule changed.

FAYE KENNEDY: If I could change this law for one other family, I've done some good. It just seems so wrong that this can go on, you know. Who else has suffered like I have because of a law?

RICHARD CARLETON: Very few people have suffered as much as you have, Faye.

FAYE KENNEDY: I just feel driven to do this. I just feel driven. And I believe I will get this result that I'm looking for. I believe that with all my heart — that the people of Queensland will support me. I need them to. And I have faith that they will. I do. I wasn't going to cry today.

RAYMOND CARROLL: I feel extremely sorry for Mrs Kennedy for her loss. I honestly hope she does get closure for this crime. But I'm sorry, she is not going to get it at my expense because I did not do it.
 

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